I was thinking..why don’t any of the slow teams (at least those which are certain not to score points on a normal raceday anyway) do some sort of stunt, by fueling one of their cars with a quarter of the tank which would allow the driver to blast through the field and catch some more TV time..it wouldn’t be illegal, it would be apparently stupid and maybe useless, but so was Ferrari’s Marlboro-alluding skin which still was good publicity

It’s not the fuel load that is slowing the new teams down. It’s their aerodynamics – they’re just not developed enough. Haven’t you noticed how they don’t get much faster when they’ve only got a uarter tank left? Besides, the cars are all fuelled in parc ferme. They can’t just put a quarter-tank in because they would be caught out.

One of the most famous examples of this was Derek Warwick running second in the Toleman at Brands Hatch in 1982. They claimed he had a driveshaft failure after he retired 40-odd laps in.

The advantages of this kind of strategy were tied in very closely with exposure for sponsors. At a time when not every race was televised live it guaranteed that Toleman – a British team – would get a lot of camera time in one of the few races that was shown live – the British Grand Prix.

There are other reasons why it wouldn’t work so well today. Reliability is far better and the performance advantage you need over another car to overtake it is much higher. Also consider that it takes until almost the end of the race for the likes of Virgin at Lotus to lap at the pace the leaders were doing at the start. See here: Italian Grand Prix fastest laps

There’s quite a lot on it in a recent book about Toleman by Christopher Hilton. According to him Rory Byrne was in on the plan as was Pat Symonds who apparently disapproved of it – apparently 26 years later he was willing to tolerate much worse things. Hunt out a copy of “The Toleman Story” for more.

Thats right. Many people believed that Sauber had a competitive car because their low fuel testing times were quite good. In spains pre season testing they almost ran low fuel only!

…and still they weren’t able to catch any sponsor! I don’t believe that companies want to sponsor a inconsistent minor team. Last year, Virgin started supporting Brawn only after a whole convincing pre-season and the Australian GP, where they dominated from Friday till the end of the race.

Surely there would be much better ways of gaining publicity: fit a nitrous kit to the back of the car, run through the field, lead for a few laps and then get black flagged. There’s no fine the FIA could impose will beat the publicity generated.